Jesus, Inc.

Mark 3:7-19

          If it wasn't a business it sure seemed like it was. This would be the first meeting of the new start up with the twelve initial executives chosen. There would be other additions to 'the company' but these were the twelve he would rest it all on. After he was physically gone, his spirit would live on and the whole business would thrive through them. And at the end of the meeting he went home. 'Mom, what a day'. Do you have some bread and some soup for me? Some matzah would go down nice right now'.

          This is the business of life and if Jesus did not intend a whole new religion to come out of his mission, it sure seems that way. Perhaps Jesus realized growing up and seeing how his initial exchanges with the authorities were going, he would have to make some wholesale changes. The spirit of Jesus, that is the Holy Spirit, was instrumental in assuring that this fledgling religion took off and expanded throughout the world. I've said it before, when Jesus came to save the chosen people, how could he deny his love and salvation to the rest of mankind, the rest of God's creations. The message soon was open to all, not just as Paul extended the Good News to the gentiles but in Jesus' own time in ministering to the sick, the sinners, the lame, the Samaritans, the Romans and even to the young male lover of a Centurion. 

        I suppose the way to help a business endeavor succeed is to make everyone part of the business plan. What was His plan?  God's love simply could not be contained to the Jews since that would leave out the rest of the world. God's plan, God's business is life and love and no one is excluded.  When scripture says "God so loved the world" it not only opens it to all mankind but it opens God's salvation and love to the entirety of God's created world. Only human arrogance thinks the message is meant just for us. But the scripture says world, not humanity, not humans, not 'man', but world. Now that is a business plan. Something to think about.

       Wht was God's intention then, to save the chosen people? No, not just the jews but everyone and everything. God created us notto fail but to live and to love and to with him (her) forever. To  make the plan work, Jesus came to earth as a human to make the message clear. It was not a message of rules, it was a resounding message of love. 

Jesus departed with his disciples to the lake, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.

He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Then he went home;